Saturday, December 31, 2005

Young aspiring male economist romanciers, I am going to educate you on a lesson that is arguably the most important lesson I ever figured out in courting the ladies. It is a lesson that is going to make your courting life a HELL of a lot easier. And I am being 100% totally serious when I say it is a VITAL lesson to learn for I have seen many a-aspiring male economist romanciers go through unneeded and undeserved pain and strife.

OK so this has happened to all of us and recently happened to a friend of mine (which triggered this post). Not to say that we've all had a date go "Oh my God, Dawson Creek is on" and then split on the date. But we all have been in the situation where we;

1. Land a date2. Get excited about the date3. And then either the date bails on us at the last minute or is no longer interested after the first date.

The problem is what happens after the girl bails on us or rejects us.

Note how Slick (the kid in the comic) responds in the last strip. He's kicking a can saying, "If I only...If I just....Maybe if I...."

And there's the problem right there.

It is this instantaneous, knee-jerk reaction that when a girl bails on us, men immediately and by default look at ourselves and say,

"Gosh, what did I do. Maybe if I did this, or maybe if I did that. What did I say? How could I improve."

And I too was in your situation as a young 24 year old when a girl cancelled on me on the last minute. And whilst racking my brain and replaying the events in order to find out what it was that I did wrong that caused her to bail, it then suddenly dawned on me;

WAIT A MINUTE, WHO SAID IT WAS MY FAULT?????

This revolutionary thinking totally changed the premise by actually admitting that maybe, maybe the problem wasn't the guy, but rather the girl. That maybe, it's just possible, that a man can play all of his cards right and the girl might be the one to fumble the ball.

Look at our young friend, Slick. How could an objective observer possibly blame Slick for the failure of the date?

So here's the rule gentlemen, it doesn't matter why the girl bails. The "why" is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what "is." If the girl bails on you, don't rack your brain trying to find out why, you can't! The only thing you can do is accept what "is."

Furthermore, I want you to understand that the "why" is probably and most certainly stupid. The girl gets cold feet. The girl didn't want to go out with you in the first place, but just couldn't hurt your feelings. Dawson's Creek is on. Etc. Whatever the case, I can practically guarantee you that 100% of the time when a girl bails, cancels, etc., her reasoning is flawed and stupid. And that if you were to actually find out the "why" you would probably roll your eyes in disgust.

Alas, the whole benefit of this revelation is that you no longer have to piss away calories of energy, time, effort and thought trying to figure out why. You just accept and move on. Furthermore, there is the confidence that chances are it probably isn't you with the problem, and I am totally serious and I'll say it again, you will find out that, yeah, the VAST majority of the time it's not you, but the girl that has issues.

Of course, this whole theory is contingent on you playing your cards right and making sure you don't have a problem. And that means behaving in a manner or being a person that you are proud of. Being a gentleman. Being polite. Being somebody that you can look at and say, "If a girl turns this type of person down, then obviously she is the one that's ef'd up."

I personally aim my best to mimmick a WWII officer and gentleman. I mean, that's pretty safe. What possible rationale would a woman have to reject a WWII, 1940's, Cary Grantish gentleman? Thus, for me, when the girl can't make it because "her hair isn't dry" (I'm not kidding, I received this excuse MORE THAN ONCE IN 2005!!!!), I can sit back in confidence and say, "you know, I played that one pretty good. I was polite. I wasn't pushy. I was charismatic and funny on the phone. I was borderline Private Ryan with an element of Gregory Peck...this girl has issues."

So do yourselves a favor men, make a resolution for 2006. Resolve that you're not going to rack your brains over things that aren't your fault. Be a gentleman, be a good guy, be an upstanding dude. And if the ladies can't appreciate that, then we know whose fault that is.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

One of the first things I tried to instill in my economics students is this concept of being "finite."

You are going to die. You will end. You get one shot at this and thus;

Time is literally your only asset.

How you choose to spend your time is what will largely determine whether you lead a full and accomplished life...or whether you piss it away watching TV, saying no to dates. saying no to dances, rearing children, not trying new things or staying at home because you're too afraid to go out and live life.

But this is just an inexcusable and pathetic waste of a precious resource;

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Happened upon these charts whilst looking to buy some property in the Black Hills area. Hard to find Price to Rents data in the more rural parts of South Dakota. Most of them come from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies "State of Housing" Report. The report itself was superb until about half way through it they totally started taking this typical leftist, academian slant, tailoring the report to show how minorities are lagging behind their white counterparts, and woe is them, and oh if we only gave minorities more of a leg up, blah blah blah.

Regardless the charts are good, my favorite of which is at the bottom;

This one is scary as hell.

This doesn't make things look better.This tells me that morons live on the coast...but if you looked at voting pattern chart of the US, it would tell you the same.This just tells me there's a lot more people applying for HEL's and ARM's to finance their trailer home or mobile homes.This tells me I should move my tiny white ass out of this bitch ass cold state and move to Atlanta and find me a southern belle.

Monday, December 26, 2005

So tis the holiday season and what gets me is the hypocrisy of the women at my office.

All Fall the top two topics of coversation were;

1. "Oh, My GOD! Did you see what happened on Desperate Housewives?"

2. Points.

Now, at first, when I heard the ladies talking about "Points" I thought there was this outside chance they were referring to the Band of Brothers episode when the troops were determining whether they had earned enough points to go home.

Of course, I was foolish to think that it was anything as historically high-brow or relevant as this.

For it turned out that the "points' they were talking about were Jenny Craig points.

Girl 1 - "Oh my God! did you know how many points are in a Chipolte fajita's shell? 14!"

Anyway, so the ladies of the office are all on some diet kick. Seems everybody is dieting. And truth be known, there are some ladies who aren't just flabbing their gums. Several ladies have lost significant wieght (one woman 75 pounds, another 35) and thus I tip my hat to them.

But for the remaining 46 of them and all their hyperbole about points and dieting and working out, I can't buy it, for it has happened now on several occasions where they'll talk about how they wish they were skinnier, how they are watching their "points" and how they're working out, and I KID YOU NOT within 30 seconds they're stuffing their face with all the holiday candy and junk food laying around.

Friday, December 23, 2005

OK, so Osama's niece is going to model and show a little skin. And frankly, I won't lie to you, yes, those western infidel men are going to look at her and drool over her, and I'll be the first in line.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

So I was cleaning out my inbox when I happened upon this little e-mail I had sent to cute little number in an attempt to get some kisses from her.

Being the economist, I thought it wise to show youjust how important your kisses are to the globaleconomy, international trade and the fight againstpoverty. For you see, you refusing to sell yourkisses on the international markets would be like thefollowing countries refusing to offer theirspecialized wares/services;

This lowers standards of living by requiring othercountries to produce all the goods and services theywish to consume, regardless of how inefficient theyare at producing it.

Thus, as you can plainly see your kisses are vital tothe economy and advancement of society. I wish itwere different, but alas one of the key revelationsyou have when studying economics is that your personaldesires have no bearing on the natural forces of themarket and economics. Sorry.

Here's a link to provide you with a basic tutorial inRicardian trade theory.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

When a people wishes to work hard to avoid poverty, as opposed to sit on their ass and expect society to provide everything for them whilst they watch Dawson's Creek, WTF did you think was going to happen.

Monday, December 12, 2005

So another article in The Economist about how property markets are overvalued. They seem to have one every three issues. However, instead of quoting the regular ol' House Price to Rents or House Price to Income ratios, they took a report from the OECD which (adjusting for other factors) showed how over/underpriced housing was in different countries.

The report in the OECD was a little older and the above figures were updated by The Economist, so I went and looked for the original report.

Now if any of you know about data mining in the OECD you might as well look for a girl with a doctorate in economics who is a Microsoft Certified Halo Champion and dresses up in french maid outfits. Because these French geniuses who compile an amazing amount of economic data are idiots when it comes to organizing it or making it easy for normal people who land a date every once in a while to find it.

Thus, as with many of my trips to the OECD, it's like Best Buy;No, they didn't have what I was specifically looking for, but I found some other stuff that I liked.

which has some good sh!t in it and particularly this chart that correlates home purchasing age with average increase in housing prices, suggesting the relationship between the proportion of a country's population that is of home buying age and housing prices.

Now, like Emril, you kick it up a notch and throw in a little dependency ratio action;and the fact that the Baby Boomers (across Europe and the US) are going to retire, sell their homestead and secondary houses when they go into assistent living/nursing home, thus adding more supply to a housing market, and

BAAAM!(or whatever the hell he says)

I think, I THINK, it may just add some downward pressure on housing prices.

Friday, December 02, 2005

So only those of Generation X is going to get that one...because, like everybody knows "Teenage Suicide, Don't Do It" is the number one song on the air.

But for those of you a little older or younger, fret not, for it's not about the movie Heathers. But it is about suicide.

Not that I was in a particularly macabre mood, specifically looking for this data, but it just happened upon me; suicide rates by country.

Now what caught my eye is that the WHO ranked it by the MALE suicide rate, presumably because men commit the vast majority of suicides (you'll have to click on the chart to make it legible).This alone is evidence to me that women drive men crazy, particularly in the former Soviet Union and socialist, developed European countries.

But curiosity got the best of me and so I re-ranked them based on the FEMALE suicide rate.

Somewhat of a correlation, Russian Federation and former Soveit Bloc countries there. As well as a good showing for the developed world in Europe.

And then curiosity got me again. If I really wanted to know which country the women were driven men the maddest, I should calculate the ratio of male suicides to female suicides, resulting in this;

Seems in Kuwait men and women drive each other equally mad while America's poor ranking further convinces me American women at the behest of Glamour Mag and Women's Studies Departments are the instigators in the majority of cases. But, good lord, stay the hell out of Belize gentlemen.

All this being said, suicide is a serious problem and it should not be made light of.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

OK, this article is the perfect example of bias and how the left let's its ideology form its truth instead of the truth forming its ideology.

First, you have this poll "commissioned by WakeUpWalMart.com, a union-funded group"

Stop right there.

It's worthless. You needn't read any further.

It's like saying;

"A poll commissioned by Captain Capitalism to determine who is the world's sexiest man is found that 98% of the people found Captain Capitalism to be the world's sexiest man."

Second, WHO GIVES A DAMN IF 59% OF THE PEOPLE THINK WAL-MART IS BAD FOR AMERICA!

Here's a clue for all you people so concerned about choice and hate Wal-Mart;

THEN DON'T SHOP THERE!!!! You go pay inflated prices to support the Ma and Pa stores. The rest of us will enjoy a higher standard of living.

Third, those out there who THINK Wal-Mart is bad for America, are morons. You're talking auto-union IQ's here where they don't take the time to be intellectually honest and research the basic economic principals of purchasing power and trade. They're sheople just regurgitating the juice fed to them by their leftist overlords and just want to bitch and complain.

One of the best things to happen to the US economy to help raise standards of living for all people, especially the poor. An invention that is on par I'd say with the internet and the left just can't stand it and has to try to besmirch it.

I am finding it harder and harder to believe that the left is misled as much as it is evil.